THE STRANGLER

by Paul E.Triem

A YOUNG man, whose clean-cut features and well-groomed figure clipped him sharply from among the riffraff of the lower quarter of the city, picked his way deliberately among the loiterers of Washington Street and turned in, with an air of leisurely consideration, at a squalid corner saloon. It was an unpromising place for such a man to quench his thirst. Half a dozen ragged loungers slouched about the musty, ill-lighted barroom, scowling suspiciously at each other or making flabby advances toward the white-aproned mixer of fancy beverages, with the hazy idea, apparently, of scraping up enough courage to attempt to "work" him for a drink on credit—the credit of Washington Street, where every second man was a thief or worse. The newcomer skirted the ranks of these practical-minded philosophers and approached the bar; with something of an effort he swung a Gladstone bag up in front of him, and let it settle with a thud on the rosewood barrier.

"A glass of half-and-half," he requested, inspecting the bartender through two keen, level and half-amused eyes.

He emptied his glass deliberately, unconscious of the fact, or indifferent to it, that the room was still and that a dozen coarsely wrapped packages of emotions—mostly crude, ungentle emotions—were watching him greedily.

Then he unsnapped the clasp of the Gladstone bag and took from it something—a long, stoutly sewed sack of heavy duck, sodden with its burden of metal disks—disks that chinked and rubbed jovially together, giving out strange music.

The silence that had settled over the room remained unbroken, but the air quivered and thrilled with pent and explosive lusts and passions. The sack was full of gold, and more sacks like it could be seen in the Gladstone bag, stacked trimly together or elbowing for room with packages of bank-notes. No wonder the grip was heavy; here was a load for a strong man to try his muscles upon—and one worth carrying! A Rockefeller or a Morgan might have stooped to pit his strength against the inertia of this burden, for it constituted a millionaire's ransom.

The bartender came roughly out of his stupor.

"You fool!" he cried, "you—you——fool! What do you mean coming in here with all them beans on you? Are you trying to give this house a bad name—want to get your wooden head split open in front of our bar and have the police nail us up? What—what in——"

He paused, panting with anger; words—even the coarse, bitter words of the quarter below the dead-line—failed to ease his burning sense of injustice.

The young man of the Gladstone bag smiled a calm, impersonal smile. He had taken a coin from the top of the open sack; now he replaced the sack and closed the grip. He even seemed oblivious to the fact that the room had filled suddenly, as if the tropic heat of men's greed had caused a rising of the moral atmosphere, so that other creatures of the street had been sucked in. Stevedores and shanty-boatmen, Americans, Jews, Greeks and even Chinamen—they skulked close to him, licking parched, ashy lips.

And the creator of all this excitement paid his bill, counted his change, and then, apparently as a matter of routine, slipped a magazine pistol from his side pocket and examined it critically. The little flat hammer was drawn down like the head of a viper, and the safety lever stuck straight back.

Apparently satisfied by this inspection, the young man turned and walked toward the door. Occasional stupid or sullen figures barred his way, but an instant's smiling regard from those ironical gray eyes cleared the path as if by magic. A moment later the room was empty—empty save for the score or so of white-faced, rat-eyed vags and floaters.

"By the Eternal!" the bartender blasphemed hoarsely, "that knob's got the gall of a brass hippopotamus! Come in here with all that agony on him—and I wouldn't like to be the gent to try to lift it, neither! That grin of his'd throw a cold wave into the pit of hell itself!"

A few of the loiterers in the saloon, recovering more quickly than their fellows from the stupor of the moment, had hurried out into the street after the departed visitor. He was gone, however; at any rate, only one person succeeded in keeping within sight of him, and that one was not proclaiming the fact, even in a stage whisper. Blondie Doyle, with his eyes glowing like the eyes of some night-hunting beast of prey, stood unobtrusively in the shadow of a row of warehouses.

Blondie hadn't followed the stranger from the saloon—he knew a trick worth a dozen of that; he had preceded him, having melted from the room while his companions were crowding toward the storm-center. Blondie never lost his head, never yielded to impulses of mere curiosity or wonder. He needed his head in his business and, thanks to his adroit use of foresight and of a sort of constructive imagination that was natural to him, Blondie had been safely hidden when the man with the satchel emerged.

Moreover, he had taken up his hiding-place in the right quarter, for the stranger came directly toward him, after dodging into the unlighted alley which Blondie had chosen as his probable path of exit. In a moment he passed, walking swiftly and very quietly, and went on up the gap cut between rows of warehouses. Of course the others had been too late to see him disappear into this gloomy crevice—Blondie had foreseen that, too.

He waited till the soft-footed pedestrian had advanced almost into the edge of the muffling blanket of darkness, then slid out of the friendly doorway that had sheltered him.

Blondie was working with the ease and adroitness of one who knows his trade by "feel" as well as by sight. He need not keep behind sheltering projections, for the man ahead neither paused nor turned. Blondie gained upon him till he was within a dozen paces, and held this distance. For half a block ahead the alley was flat and bare; there would be something to hide, presently, and the strangler waited for an areaway.

A little farther along there appeared the sunken entrance to a deserted basement. Blondie knew the place as well as he knew his own strong fingers, and in an instant he had lessened the gap between himself and the man with the Gladstone bag, running easily and without a sound. Although he had left the saloon too early to see the pistol which the other carried, he knew perfectly well that the man with the grip was armed; every one who came below the dead-line was armed.

For a moment he paused, studying at close hand the details of the figure before him. He noted that the bag had grown no lighter; the man who carried it was breathing hard, and even as Blondie threw himself forward he saw the other swing his burden heavily from his right hand to his left.

Men had been garroted recently, in dark side streets of the town—gaily dressed theater-goers, whose diamonds twinkled red and green in the rays of distant street lights; business men carrying wallets or steel cash-boxes. Blondie remembered some of them as he leaped upon the man with the Gladstone bag—none of them had come into his hands so easily as had this present victim.

His left forearm crossed the other's throat and a hand was locked behind his head. There was a strangling sob—which, being a familiar sound in the garroter's business, produced no effect upon Blondie. He merely drew the struggling figure nearer, striking upward, as he did so, with his knee. He had frequently found this blow over the kidneys a decidedly sedative application in such cases.

And then, as he grunted a little and drew himself closer to his prisoner, something happened. It came very quickly, and one event melted into another with such perplexing rapidity that the garroter lost all knowledge of sequence. A hand gripped his wrist and twisted it forcibly around till the whole arm was strained and tense as a fiddle-string. Blondie felt the stab of millions of needles along the tortured nerve-fibers, and then, after an evanescent impression of lightness and flight, he fell with a great jar and was lying pinned by his still imprisoned arm. Something—probably a knee—was pressed mercilessly into the hollow of his neck and against the bone of his jaw.

Almost before Blondie knew that he was on the ground, he was twisted over, face down, and both arms were being pried up toward his shoulder-blades. He grunted with pain, but the man who was kneeling upon him merely gave his wrists an extra shove and proceeded to bind them tightly together.

Next, the garroter's ankles were roped, and presently Blondie, transformed into a long and uncouth bundle, was rolled with his face toward the distant, silver-white strip that represented the sky.

In the shadow of the narrow, unlighted way, he could just make out the calmly scrutinizing face of his captor, the young man of the satchel. Next moment the latter spoke.

"You came nearer making it than I intended to let you, my man," he commented grimly. "You certainly know how to administer a very efficient choiring—although your hold lacks science. Now I could teach you—but we'll talk of that another time. You aren't hurt anywhere, are you?"

This question seemed to Blondie Doyle so utterly ridiculous, so absolutely and gratuitously silly, that he merely continued to stare into the hard, smiling eyes that looked into his own. It was as if he should ask a victim from whom he had just taken, by his own peculiar methods of finance, a roll of bills or a diamond stud, whether he were having a good time.

His companion seemed to understand Blondie's point of view, for he laughed and continued:

"It isn't that I give a continental about you as an individual," he explained coolly. "I'd have broken your neck and thought nothing of it if I hadn't needed you—but we'll talk this over in my quarters. Just lie still a bit, will you?"

He- got up and stood looking at Blondie, then stooped quickly and lifted him in his arms, quite easily, in spite of the strangler's one hundred and eighty-odd pounds of brawn.

"I'll just leave you in this cellar entrance while I attend to a little business," he said, speaking more to himself than to Blondie. "I'll be back directly."

This was gratifying news to the garroter, who had the pleasure of being deposited in the areaway he had chosen for his victim. For a moment he could see the lithe figure of his mysterious captor framed in the murky light of the upper alley. Then he was alone.

IN SPITE of the fact that Blondie had reasons for not caring to await his captor's return, he was unable to budge the knots that bound him. He writhed about and strained and twisted, cursing in the meantime with all the earnestness of a devout Brahman singing incantations. He was still fighting a useless battle, some twenty minutes later, when he heard a sound that made him pause in puffing, blasphemous wonder.

It was the hum of a motor-car, which evidently was feeling its way toward him through the gloom of the midnight. Presently it stopped, and a moment later the same lithe figure which had disappeared up the stairs came bounding down them, and again Blondie was gathered into a pair of terrible arms—arms such as he had never dreamed of, scrapper and ex-ringman though he was.

"Easy's the word, my boy," the young man laughed as he clambered back to the street level.

A taxicab, with its red and green guard-lights casting weird daubs of color into the strange corners of the neighborhood, stood beside the strip of rotting, soggy boards that represented a sidewalk. The driver jumped down and opened the door as the strange pair approached.

"You can follow the main streets; if he makes a rumpus I'll quiet him," the man who carried Blondie commented. "Throw up my grip, will you, Larry?"

The garroter would have liked to nudge himself, just to be sure he was awake. He saw the chauffeur stagger toward the door, carrying the Gladstone bag that had baited him, Blondie Doyle, into this trap. The thing was deposited on the floor of the cab, the driver fastened the door, whose curtain was pulled low, and next instant there was the whir and grind of machinery thrown into gear, and he felt himself being borne swiftly through the darkness toward his unknown destination.

II

FOR a while the cab lurched as it crept forward, but gradually it gained speed, and Blondie decided the chauffeur had made his way into better-lighted streets and that the underworld had been left behind. He felt a decided reluctance toward anything in the way of an outcry or alarm; for even if he had forgotten the sinister comment of his companion to the driver, he realized that he was not exactly in a strategic position for any such move. Truly, the police might succeed in stopping the cab and making an investigation, but Blondie felt not the slightest desire to be investigated. So he leaned stolidly back against the cushions, glancing from time to time at the blotch of white that stood for the face of his captor.

After what he estimated as half an hour's ride, the machine swerved beneath him, slowed down and stopped. The door was opened and the young man beside Blondie jumped out.

"Keep your eye on my friend for a moment," he requested the driver, as he grasped the heavy bag and stepped upon the walk with it.

Blondie saw that the cab had stopped outside an old-fashioned stone house, one of a row of similar buildings. Under the narrow porch a light glimmered, casting feeble rays upon wide stone steps. He saw the man with the grip pass rapidly up these steps, admit himself with a key and disappear.

He was out again next moment and was standing beside the cab.

"I'm going to free your feet," he told Blondie, "but I'd advise you not to make the mistake of trying to get away."

The strangler imagined that the chauffeur must have been paid in advance or that some regular understanding in regard to pay existed between him and this eccentric person who was now leading him, Blondie Doyle, up a flight of stone stairs, for he heard the regular, cicada-like hum of the receding machine.

For the first time in his life there came into this strong man's consciousness a vague, troubling, half-realized sensation of fear—he was alone with a person whose like he had never encountered; he knew the terrible strength of that hand which rested lightly on his arm, but there was a subtle impression of moral power, of dominant will-force, in the other's mere silent presence that cowed Blondie and forced him to stumble along sullenly and without a definite thought of flight or resistance.

The door of the stone house opened and closed. The air was wonderfully cool and sweet within—the heated, dusty city seemed to have receded into an infinitely distant past, so that the strangler might have been on one of the planets. Something clicked and he stood blinking in the yellow light of an overhead lamp. He saw that he was standing in a broad reception-hall, and then he was pushed forward and through an open doorway. The lights here were turned on, and Blondie uttered an exclamation—something white, with great, dark holes for eyes and with its wonderfully perfect teeth gleaming at him in a sardonic grin, faced him from under a glass cover, nearly level with his face.

The man beside Blondie smiled. " They're harmless when they get to that stage, my friend," he commented. "Have a chair—I'll remove your bonds after we've reached an agreement."

The strangler's glance took in other details of the room; bookcases and reading-tables of Circassian walnut; a microscope and some instruments on a table of white enamel and plate glass; some curious, crooked-bladed swords on the wall—and then his eyes were drawn to his captor's face. The young man of the Gladstone bag sat opposite him, smiling almost benevolently.

"I'll wager it's some time since you had as interesting an evening as this," he said genially. "Not that I'm running down your ordinary devices for passing the time—if you're the man I'm looking for, you have not lived the life of a church warden hitherto. But I think this has been a little unusual. Now let me ask you a question. Do you want to earn some money—more money than you probably ever saw before?"

Blondie's eyes narrowed. He was beginning to grow accustomed to the unusual; and the mention of money and of a chance of acquiring some of it thoroughly stilled and poised his thoughts. He stared intently at the speaker.

"I'll tell you what I want you to do," the latter continued, "and you can decide whether you care to take the risks. In a small house standing by itself in the north part of town, at an address which I will furnish you later, an old gentleman lives alone, except for a cat. The old man and I worked together once at the project of making artificial diamonds of commercial size. We didn't succeed, but one of the byproducts of our work was a discovery that was worth infinitely more to the world, and, perhaps, to us. We made rubber synthetically; pure, perfect rubber, with all the qualities of the tree-grown product."

He paused for a moment to watch the effect of this statement on the strangler, but Blondie was far from being impressed. He stared back indifferently and, with an amused shrug of disgust, the young man continued:

"Rubber is worth more from the viewpoint of political economy than diamonds, and I imagine this process is worth more in money than one for turning out perfect stones would be. However, that's neither here nor there. My part of the work was largely that of a superintendent in a factory. I had the general theory, and I had worked out many of the details. I hired Professor Hueber to help me with the myriads of formula; that must be tested and retained or rejected. It was trying, nerve-wrecking work, and at times the old man showed signs of giving out. A week's rest usually put him on his feet again, however.

"He worked at this for two years, and then, late one night, he sent a messenger to my house to tell me that he had finished—that quite by accident he had found the missing element, and that the specimen of gum which he was sending had come out of his retort not more than half an hour before. He told me that he was exhausted and that he would retire at once, and asked me to come to the laboratory at ten the next morning."

The young man paused to open a drawer, from which he took a square of a dark red substance which he held up in front of Blondie Doyle. It was a pliable and elastic solid, which seemed to the strangler not a whit different from any other square piece of rubber.

"This is what he sent me," the speaker continued, "and from laboratory tests I have corroborated the old man's statement. This rubber grew in a retort instead of a tree, and the secret of making it is worth millions. You may be sure that I went to the laboratory at ten next morning, but at first the house seemed to be deserted. After I had knocked the third time a window was cautiously lifted above-stairs and some one dropped a cylinder of paper out on the steps beside me.

"I picked it up and found that it was a note addressed to me in a peculiarly irregular hand. I read it through twice—and then I realized that the old scientist had lost his reason! The strain, ending in sudden and unexpected success, had completely maddened him.

"He stated that he had worked out the formulæ and had put them, together with my manuscripts which detailed the preliminary work, into a receptacle in the house and had contrived a series of electrical connections so that from any point in his laboratory or living-rooms he could press a button which would ignite and utterly destroy the whole accumulation of material. He had blundered upon the perfecting link in the chain, and it was his to do with as he pleased. He would wager it against my share in the work: if I could obtain the manuscript, it was mine; but if he caught me within the house he would set off his infernal machine and put the discovery forever beyond my reach."

Again the young man paused and sat watching Blondie, his eyes, with their hint of glacial ice and of uncompromising determination, narrowed and fierce.

"What I want is a man with the courage and the skill to enter this house at night and get these papers. He will have this great advantage over me, that if he is caught at the work he will be taken for an ordinary burglar—and the manuscript will not suffer. He must be one built and trained for the business, cool even in danger and defeat, alert and strong and determined. And for this service I will pay ten thousand dollars, without a proviso or hitch. He will receive the money in any shape he desires to take it in, and will be free to spend it openly, without danger of protest or molestation. Now then, do you want it?"

He slid close to Blondie and shot out this last question with such force that the strangler blinked.

There was little considering to be done, however; Blondie had followed the young man's narrative closely enough to be able to understand what was required from him. It Was in his line, and he knew that he could do it if it could be done.

"You can deal me in," he said, speaking gruffly and for the first time since he had been captured. "One thing I wants to ask, boss. Suppos'n, I tries my best and doesn't find the stuff—what then? Does I get the coin or the boot-toe?"

The scientist laughed. "Do your best and you'll not fail," he predicted. "I can tell you just where to look, but if anything goes wrong you won't lose your reward. The gods of this world have dealt bountifully with me, and I deal bountifully with those who try honestly to serve me. I believe you are my man. I fished for big fish; the sight of so much money scared out the little fellows, and you, who had the courage to follow into so forbidding a country, should have both the courage and the ability to succeed very easily against this old man."

He was smiling into Blondie's face, and the strangler felt his heart slow down and then start to sprint—there was something almost terrifying in that smile.

III

WHERE Blondie crouched, in the shadow of a hedge in the outskirts of the city, he might have been again plunged into his own underworld of gloom and darkness. About him, however, scattered cottages were. set in squares of lawn and garden, and the fragrance of a bank of roses came to him, heavy and stifling as with the sodden breath of the night. It was that deadest of all dead and lifeless periods, two o'clock in the morning. Somewhere near at hand a rooster flopped his wings and crowed raucously.

"I'd like to have a hind leg of you fried," the strangler grumbled, as he finished unlacing the second of his shoes and pulled it off with a jerk. "I could pretty near get it down raw, with the feathers on. That's the old buck's house, all right. I'll go in by that half window—the pantry, or maybe a bathroom."

He straightened up and walked across the dewy turf, pausing below the open window just long enough to look back and to listen for any sound from within or without. The world was as still as it could have been before the first sunrise, however, and with an easy movement Blondie reached up, hooked his hands over the sill and lifted himself till he was staring into the darkness of the room beyond. Cautiously he slid through and felt the cool touch of polished wood beneath his bare feet.

In his earlier years, before he became a garroter, Blondie had done work of this kind; the memory of old times came to him now, and he worked with the poise and mastery of a thorough tradesman. He found the door and let himself into a corridor, then felt his way forward, touching doors on each side and stopping at the end of the passage to consider. He had kept his turnings and advances straight in mind and knew exactly where he was in relation to the outer lines of the building. Also, he knew where he was according to a sketch which his employer had drawn for him. He listened attentively again, then grasped the knob of the door before him, drew it firmly toward him and turned it quickly to avoid any chance squeaks or quavers. With the same swift motion he shoved the door open and was standing inside the room at the end of the passage.

Straggling blue rays from a distant arc light were reflected from rows of bottles and scattered articles of glass and metal on benches about the wall, and by this uncertain light Blondie made out that he had entered a large room fitted up as a laboratory. From it there opened, at the side farthest from the strangler, a smaller room. Toward this he headed.

"This is going to be chicken-pie for me," he mumbled. "Ten thousand plunks—say, I'll buy a buzz-wagon 'n' I'll ride around below the Line 'n show 'em how to hit her up. I'll——"

Cheered, almost intoxicated, by thoughts of his own coming grandeur, Blondie was nevertheless alert enough to hear a stealthy sound near him; he whirled, jerking up one arm automatically to fend off a possible blow aimed at his head or face. At the same instant he became conscious of something tightening about his chest, binding one arm firmly to his side and biting and burning into his flesh till he cried out in agony. He realized that a noose had settled over him, and that he was being lifted from the floor.

Next moment the room was filled with blinding blue fight and, as the strangler spun slowly about, like some great bird trussed before a fire, he saw a tall old man dancing about, in imminent danger of falling from a gallery near the ceiling.

"So ho, my bird—my fish—my dainty gazelle! I have you fast and safe at the first shot! Don't pluck at the rope, my beauty, for it's made of steel fibers, carefully tempered. I'll let you down after I've looked you over."

Blondie caught fleeting glimpses of him stalking along the gallery and down the narrow stairs at the end. Then the old man was standing beside him.

He was a tall, lean, white-haired old man, garbed in some nondescript night-garment in two pieces and bound about the waist with a doubled strand of cord. The strangler took in these details one at a time as he slowed to a standstill and hung, swaying. His captor was looking him over, with his head tipped back and his thin, high-bridged nose apparently ready to peck at Blondie, like an eagle's beak.

"What did you come here for?" the old man demanded suddenly.

Blondie stared at him with a sort of fascination that bound his tongue and held him almost hypnotized. The feeling had come over him that the old man was a dream; that this whole night of vicissitudes and misadventures was a series of very evil nightmares, caused by dope in his drink or too much free lunch.

A glint of anger kindled in the old man's eyes and he whirled about and strode away.

"He refuses to talk," the strangler heard him muttering. "Well, I have a cure for that—he shall experience the exquisite torture."

The words buzzed about in Blondie's throbbing head like a lonely bee in a barrel, leaving him just where he had been before—half suffocated by the binding weight about his chest and wholly stupefied by the totality of his surroundings. He saw the old man skim up the narrow stairs and appear directly over him on the gallery. He heard the clink of glass. Then his captor was peering over at him.

"Duck your head, my stubborn beauty!" he shrilled angrily. "If this stuff goes in your eyes, you will never again behold the light in this mortal existence! Duck—duck——-"

Blondie had just sense enough to tip his head as far forward as the strain of his position would allow, and next moment something splashed against the exposed back of his neck. Instantly there seemed to be a superheated iron searing and corroding the tissues. Blondie threw his free hand back and another drop splashed upon that. When he brought it around with a wild sweep of his arm a purple blotch had appeared. It puffed up as the garroter looked, and stabbing pains shot through his arm and shoulder. He seemed to be in some infernal machine, with two white-hot poles scorching him. Reason was quickened by his extremity, and he realized that he must do something to appease the wrath of his mad captor, or he would be consumed alive by this terrible caustic.

"I beg!" he cried. "Come down and I'll talk—I didn't mean to keep mum, but you got me hoodooed!"

He heard the old man chuckling with satisfaction as he sped back along the gallery and down the steps, and desperately his mind went groping about for a means of still further pacifying him. If only he could entice him near enough to lay his one free hand on him! Blondie's jaws ground with sudden rage, and he felt the trammeled blood boiling up into his head. For a moment things turned red; then the old man was peering curiously into his face.

"Now then," he said briskly, "before I ask you to talk, let me warn you that you got off easily this time. The next—" he held up a long, slim, needle-like piece of steel which glistened in the blue light—" the next time we have any trouble, I will make just one thrust into you with this, my pipkin, and the haunts that have known you will know you no more forever. This needle is inoculated with the virus of anthrax, my infant—anthrax, malignant pustule, my beauty. You'll die a beautiful death—and one false answer will bring all this beatitude into your life!"

He paused, apparently to let the full terror of this statement sink into Blondie's consciousness. The strangler watched him fearfully, eying the infected needle for brief intervals, then letting his glance wander back—which it did of its own free will—to the white, lean, forbidding face of the mad scientist. He noticed that there was a patch of rust near the end of the needle, as if it had been dipped into some thick liquid and allowed to dry slowly. Blondie was densely ignorant on the subject of bacteriology, but something grimly assuring in the old man's presence convinced him that life for Blondie Doyle now hung by a veritable spider-web. If only he could lay hold of that long, lean neck——

"What did you come in here for?" the old man demanded.

"I came in for money or jewelry or whatever I could find," Blondie told him.

He felt the other's eyes drilling into the recesses of his being, but as he was merely lying now, not openly defying his captor, he felt that he was safe.

"Jewelry!" the old man scoffed. "Do I look like the kind to wear jewelry?"

"I never saw you afore," Blondie assured him earnestly. "You c'n believe me, boss, I wouldn't have set foot in this blasted house if I'd ha' knowed you was here. Let me down; I 'll go away now—fer Gawd's sake let me down, afore I smothers with the weight of this noose!"

Most of this speech seemed to have passed over his companion's head. The old man stood with his lean chin in his hand, his elbow resting against the pit of his stomach. He was studying Blondie as he might have studied a strange crystal.

Gradually a film seemed to gather over his eyes and he swayed a little as he stood peering at his prisoner. Blondie felt his flesh quivering—a little more and he would topple within reach. Evidently the old man was going into some kind of fit. The strangler's arm knotted spasmodically and he stared straight at his captor.

Again the old man swayed toward him. Blondie hardly realized that his own body jerked to meet the other, as his free arm shot out. There was a scream as of some one awakening from an ugly dream, and that lean figure so near his own danced back, out of reach, then swooped down upon him. Blondie saw the old man's uplifted arm descend, felt the stab of the needle through his shoulder, and in his mad terror he struck out with all the power his position would allow him. His maul-like fist caught the scientist on the point of the chin and the old man toppled backward.

At the same instant the strangler's strained senses gave way, and felty blackness filled his mind and seemed to puff out into the room. He hadn't fainted; he, Blondie Doyle, was as conscious of himself as he had ever been in his life, but that isolating blackness seemed to have severed him by an infinite distance from the rest of the universe. Through this cloud he seemed to hear steps running, heard, as from another world, a door open. Then all was silent.

WHEN his eyes opened he was lying on the floor, staring up at a tube which gave out a blue-green radiance. He turned slightly and groaned—his whole body ached and throbbed, and he saw that some one had bandaged his hand, and felt a pad pressing against the back of his neck. He remembered the old man's terrible threat and the stab of the needle through his shoulder, and sat up suddenly with a scream.

Some one behind him spoke quietly:

"You'd best lie down for a while. You've been under quite a strain, and you've two bad acid burns. I've dressed them and you won't suffer much inconvenience from them. You've laid the Professor out as limp as he'll be at the last day—lie still while I see what I can do for him."

"But the needle!" Blondie raved. "The old bloat said it was poison, 'n' he got me in the shoulder afore I could land on him. Fer Gawd's sake, mister, do something fer me afore I swells up and busts!"

"His needle was as harmless as any other needle," the voice behind Blondie assured him. The speaker came over and stood above him—it was the young man of the Gladstone bag, serene and gentle as if he were playing dominoes. "He was always a little off on such things, but I sterilized all of these playthings of his before he barred me from the house. I'll cut the puncture open and clean it out with permanganate presently, but you do not need to worry."

Blondie turned as the other left him, rolling painfully until he could see the opposite side of the room. The old man was lying on a blanket, his white hair and colorless skin livid and ghastly in the blue light of the laboratory.

"Be—be you sure he ain't dead, boss?" Blondie demanded hoarsely, forgetting for a moment his own troubles.

"He's not dead, although you gave him a bad tumble."

For a few moments the strangler lay watching the pair. Gradually a tinge of color came into the old man's face, and his hands twitched. Then with a long sigh he turned his head and opened his eyes, staring for a while at the silent figure above him. Suddenly he sprang up and held out his hand joyously.

"Why, Danny, boy!" he cried, "I must have gone to sleep at my bench! Is it morning? Surely it is! Oh, my friend, my friend, I've had such dreams—but we've won, Danny! We've won the great prize! Listen! It was glucose that did it! Quite by accident—in desperation, you might say—I tried it. I meant to have sent you some of the gum as it came from the retort, but I must have fallen asleep."

The young man of the Gladstone bag smiled.

"You sent me the gum, Professor," he said gently. "And I came and found you—sleeping. I brought a man with me in case there was any little cleaning up to be done about the place. You have finished your work, my friend, and you must go for a long vacation."

He led the old man over to a chair and watched him sink into it.

IV

THE scent of dewy rose-gardens came to Blondie as he limped across the lawn and dropped down beside the hedge to put on his shoes. He paused to take from the inner pocket of Ms coat a letter, written on stiff linen paper and tucked into an open envelope. He had had it read to Mm, knew that it was addressed to the president of the Citizen's National Bank and that it authorized that gentleman to see that the accompanying check for ten thousand dollars was paid to the bearer without question.

For the first time in ten hours a grin spread itself over the strangler's face.

"He's the limit!" he growled, admiration and fear and wonder in his guttural tone. "Used me fer bait! Sent me ahead to keep the old bloat busy so's he could swipe the stuff hisself! 'N' he had it afore me 'n' old knobs come to the last round! Say, I earned the money all right, all right! The old oyster cooked me to a T where he got at it. But ain't I the doctor, though! Who'd ha' thought a crack like that on the mug would ha' jarred the cobwebs out'n his noodle? I ought to put in a bill fer curin' him!"

He folded the check and the letter and put them back carefully into his pocket, stooped, pulled one shoe into place, then drew out the envelope and repeated the process of examining its contents.

"In the name of ham, how'm I goin' to spend it?" he demanded slowly. "Say, Blondie,you're agoin' to travel. You're agoin' to see the world! Only first you'll get a buzz-wagon 'n' you'll make 'em all climb posts 'n hydrants down below the Line. You've got money, my boy—you're rich!"

He stuffed the envelope back and caught up the other shoe in a sudden frenzy; then he settled back with a groan.

"The bank don't open till ten o'clock," he reminded himself disconsolately.